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Brian Jungen: Using Animal Hides to Make Prints

Author of the article:

Kevin Griffin

Publishing date:

January 7, 2011 • 4 minute read

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It was the smell: of all things, I wasn’t prepared for being met by a smokey odour when I stepped into the gallery. It must have had something to do with the contrast between the clear, cold air outside and the stuffier, warm air inside. Whatever it was, my response was reptilian: the smell got inside me before I could put up any barriers to keep it out.

Brian Jungen: Using Animal Hides to Make PrintsBack to video

What was odd was that I hadn’t noticed the odour the first time I’d gone to see a new exhibition of Brian Jungen at the Catriona Jeffries Gallery in east Vancouver. The reason I was making a second visit was that the work wasn’t finished earlier in December. Jungen was making the exhibition in the gallery after hours and during two periods when it was closed: in effect, he turned the exhibition space into a working studio. By early January, it was finished.

The smell? Well, it came directly from some of the materials used to create the works: moose and deer hides which had been cured with smoke from poplar wood. The hides do double duty: various parts are used to create artworks themselves and the leftover bits to create the templates to make prints.

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Although Jungen’s foray into making prints is new, he’s done it in his own signature way that involves re-using materials in unexpected ways. He first burst on the art scene in 1999 with an exhibition called Prototypes for a New Understanding which took Air Jordan Nike running shoes and re-imagined and re-made them in the style of Northwest Coast masks. Since then, his career has taken off and he’s had shows around the world including the New Museum in New York, the Vancouver Art Gallery and at the Tate Modern in London. Of both Swiss and Dunne-Za heritage, Jungen has become one of the country’s leading artists.

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Jungen’s most recent major exhibition was at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. Not only was that the first time his work was exhibited in a space dedicated to historic First Nations work, it was the National Museum’s first exhibit by a living artist. During that experience, he was asked about making prints which forms a big portion of the traditional art market for First Nations artists. That led to the current print-making exhibition at Catriona Jeffries.

(You can read a great article by Paul Chaat Smith, the NMAI’s associate curator, on the Jungen exhibiton by going here.)

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Rather than making a clear distinction between the materials used in production from the finished work, he’s blurred the lines and made an exhibition of works from both sides of the production process.

The exhibition has several parts to it. What I found the most dynamic were two sail-like works made from the moose and deer hides that had been wrapped around used car fenders. One was made out of circular shapes of leather of the size of traditional hand-drums stitched together with more sinew. Surrounding the red fender, it looked like it was trying to embrace the metal. It was supported by a grey metal stand which stood on a plinth of a white Frigidaire chest freezer of the kind that Jungen’s family keeps outdoors and uses to freeze game. The unnamed work struck me as being both hand-made and ready-made.

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The left-over bits of leather with the circular holes have been used as templates to make images on prints. In one set, he’s printed the cutouts in grey on black foam core in a rectangular shape that dropily leans against the wall and extends onto the floor. With its four black holes, the image looks like a wonky head gasket.

Another hide has been left intact with its irregular edges. Painted red and used as a template, its more visceral shapes have been combined in one long print with the circular cutouts.

After seeing the entire show at the gallery, my impressions are similar to what they were the first time. The works look like the products of colliding systems. Saying the opposing forces are organic and manufactured is a little too glib but they do resemble the signs of different world views trying to occupy the same space. Instead of a pleasing resolution, the works display an uneasy co-existence.

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After the exhibition at Catriona Jeffries – which continues to Saturday, Jan. 15 – the exhibition will be next seen in Toronto where it will be part of a solo show of Jungen’s work at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

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*Top: One of the sculptural works made out of moose and deer hides by Brian Jungen.

*Middle: Two of the prints made using the hides as templates: the one on the wall is on paper; the one on the floor, on foam core.

*Bottom: the red sculptural work in the corner is a hide painted red which was one of the templates used to create the red images in the paperwork above.

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